Joshua Dachs is the guy who kicked the hornet’s contributors nest. The New York City-based theatre designer had some surprisingly critical things to say in the January issue of American Theatre about one of the nation’s most common theatrical configurations—the ubiquitous black box—and its effects on our perceptions of drama. A double-page Letters to the Editor spread in this issue captures some of the buzz that has ensued in the weeks since his essay, “The Neutrality Trap,” got AT readers’ dander up.
After that flurry of lively and brainy responses, we decided that Dachs deserves, at the least, a repeat engagement in our pages—and the follow-up question was obvious: If the classic black box falls short of Dachs’s ideal for a performance space, what are the theatrical environments that ring his chimes? What makes, in his considered view, an ideal theatre?
No problem. Our architectural agitator had an expansive answer at the ready, and it appears on page 36 of this issue. “Escape from Neutrality,” in contrast to Dachs’s earlier, more analytical essay, evokes the sensuous experience of attending performances at four great theatre spaces, two in the United States, a third in Germany and a fourth in Japan. You may or may not have found your way into any of the venues Dachs extols, but you will understand from his responses how these environments, in his words, “resonate with everything that is performed there, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes in contrast, but always in a way that enriches the experience for everyone.”
Dachs’s crucial point is not lost on arts reporter Mark Blankenship, who begins his lead feature on the theatre community’s response to the same-sex marriage debate (page 26) by evoking a life-meets-art event that none of those in attendance will soon forget—a triple wedding performed last July on the stage of Broadway’s St. James Theatre following a performance of Hair. What a heady mix—the gilded setting, the theatre folk pledging their vows, the ordained actor presiding, the ebullient Tribe from Hair in attendance, and a thousand-plus witnesses cheering from the house! An enriching environment, indeed.
You will find echoes of Dachs’s well-taken points elsewhere in the issue as well—particularly in David Cote’s appreciative review of Jonathan Kalb’s important new book on marathon theatre events (one of which is Peter Brook’s Mahabharata, famously performed in one of Dachs’s chosen houses, the Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn). Like some of this issue’s letter-writers, you may not agree with Dachs’s contention that neutrality is an inherently anti-theatrical quality to be avoided whenever possible. But you’ll emerge from this issue convinced that its opposite—a resonant connection to the world, rich in intellectual and emotional associations, abundant with possibility—is theatrical gold.
